Jeff Gordon was happy to speak at the Sprint Cup Series Awards ceremony last week.

Sure, he would have liked to have finished better than 10th in the Sprint Cup standings. But considering he nearly missed the Chase and then barely cracked the top 10 in the final standings, he had a tough time complaining about his finish.

“You always have to be proud to be on that stage. It’s an accomplishment,” Gordon said last week. “There’s a lot of competition out there and while it was not the position that we had hoped for, it’s still great to be there.”

So was he happy? He made it thanks to a second-place run at Richmond that vaulted him into the Chase while keeping Kyle Busch out, and then a win in the season finale at Homestead launched him into the final top 10, despite a 25-point penalty for intentionally wrecking Clint Bowyer at Phoenix.

Gordon knows he should have had a better season.

“With everything that happened to us this year, there were moments where we didn’t even think we would be in the Chase let alone be in the top 10,” Gordon said. “I certainly felt like we had a team capable of being in the top five, and I’m proud of that but also disappointed in that.”

Gordon was 24th in the standings after 11 races and never cracked the top 12 until that race at Richmond. In the six weeks leading into the Chase, he won at Pocono, then had a pair of finishes worse than 20th before a third at Bristol, a second at Atlanta and a second at Richmond earned him a postseason berth.

He rode that momentum into the Chase and then promptly crashed when his throttle stuck at Chicagoland, resulting in a 35th-place finish. He followed that with three top-three finishes but then didn’t finish in the top five again until the season finale.

“We had some good runs and things but the most frustrating part about this season was just the fact that just every time we started to get momentum, it got broken up by something,” Gordon said.

“That is what prevented us from being a bigger threat for the championship. Our cars were fast enough to do it but it takes more than that.”

Gordon said he didn’t want to point fingers but sees areas where he feels his team needs to improve to build on the momentum of the Homestead win.

“There’s some areas that we’re weak that we need to do a better job at,” Gordon said. “I feel like our pit crew could be a little bit more consistent. There (were) times that we can be more aggressive, me in the car and us in some of our call-making.

“The most important thing is fast racecars and there are a few tracks that we missed the setup.”

The performances at Richmond, Homestead, Pocono and being honored with the Myers Brothers Award for contributions on and off the track will be his season highlights.

But just the fact that he needed a near-upset at Richmond to make the Chase rankles him even a few month after the fact.

“We had chances to win, we had chances to finish in the top five, for whatever reason, … a lot of different things led to that (not happening),” Gordon said. “That’s what I look at. I don’t ever want to be in that position but we were there and I love the way we stepped up at that moment.”

Gordon’s momentum came crashing down from that Richmond high with the Chicago wreck.

“We got it all crushed the following week at Chicago,” he said. “That’s the way our season was. It was hard to get that turned around. That’s what we’re focused on right now over the offseason — carry that momentum from Homestead and try to turn that around and figure out how we can make sure that doesn’t happen next year.”